Automated Functions Ensure Powerful Performance

The first F-Series large milling machine has been delivered to the Sicilian road construction contractor Sicilstrade. Its first project: rehabilitation work on the SS126 and SS626 national highways in the heartland of the island.

The landscape is picturesque and these roads are a joy to drive on. Rising and falling as they hug the sides of the hills, the roads treat drivers to wonderful views of the surrounding countryside. But it’s often a challenging task when they need to be repaired or resurfaced. The site logistics and the choice of equipment have to be carefully planned to minimize obstruction to traffic and keep it as short as possible. For its rehabilitation project on the SS126 and SS626 national highways, Sicilstrade deliberately decided to use a W 210 Fi large milling machine to mill off the entire width of the road surface in only 2 to 3 passes.

Outstanding Results From the First Cut On

The individual sections of the rehabilitation project were between 50 and 500 m long. In rehabilitation measures of this kind, the milling machine is repositioned several times a day and moves from one section to the next partly under its own power. The big advantage of the new F-Series technology: the machine delivered the desired milling pattern with the first cut, even on short sections.

Mill Assist Assures Optimal Milling Quality

The Mill Assist assistance system monitors the milling quality and delivers a perfect surface from the first meter on. The results are consistently good on each individual section, no matter whether it’s 50 m long to a milling depth of 3 cm or 500 m to a depth of 5 cm. The operator can rely completely on the machine and concentrate fully on the offloading of the milled material to transport vehicles and the milling cut. This meant that the individual patches could be milled off in record time and allowed the completion of several sections per day. “I’ve been working with Wirtgen equipment for a long time, including milling machines of this size. And I must say that I’m really impressed by the new features of the F-Series,” says Roberto Prainito, the owner of Sicilstrade.

The W 210 Fi Impresses with Outstanding Maneuverability

The combination of outstanding maneuverability, offloading capacity, and flexibility made the machine the ideal choice for the project on the winding roads. An experienced team from Sicilstrade was always on site and ready to fill out each new patch directly behind the machine. Off with the old asphalt pavement and in with the new in only a couple of hours – without any serious disruption of traffic through road closures. All of which was achievable only with a W 210 Fi large milling machine from Wirtgen. “We are only working on small patches here, and the machine does a superb job. I can hardly wait to see how it performs on a bigger construction project”, says Prainito.

Considerably Increased Quality on Construction Sites

On this project, a whole range of automated functions like positioning in a second cut or automatic tracking of the discharge conveyor speeded up the process and led to considerably better quality of the results produced on the construction site. Above all here, the combination of Mill Assist, the ability to save and store milling depths, and automatic positioning of the milling drum in each new cut made it particularly easy to complete the milling work on the differently sized patches.

The W 210 Fi proved its flexibility in every respect and also showed that it is the ideal machine for projects with complex logistical challenges.